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Just a couple days ago I received a text message from our friend and former roommate, Sam, asking about the best ways to paint a piece of unfinished wood furniture. In return for our knowledge, she promised to take pictures of the process and send them our way:

Supplies:

Piece of unfinished furniture or wood

Paint or primer

Stain

Paint brushes

A piece of plastic on which to do this, if working on this indoors

Dry cloth or rag

“I took an old Ikea night stand that I have had for years.”

“Stenciled on a design I wanted”

“Took primer and painted the areas I wanted white then used a stain and stained the whole night stand.”

“I took a dry cloth and wiped down the white areas after because they seemed a little sticky but it wasn’t really necessary.”

And there you have it! In just a few simple steps, Sam turned this run-of-the-mill nightstand into a personalized piece with lost of character!

Like this:

Yes, you read that correctly, I decided to paint a rug this week. I had actually been thinking about this project for a while and read many tutorials on others’ experience with this task. I had this basic round Ikea rug that had become victim to hair dye over the past few years so it was a prime candidate for a makeover.

Supplies:

Rug

Paint – I started out using acrylics and switched over to latex paint

Stencil

Paint brushes

Here we go, I didn’t end up using all those paint colors, but I wasn’t sure yet what colors I was going to use. I also picked up that $5 stencil at Michaels along with the 39 cent brushes(which I would NOT recommend, I broke all of them within 5 minutes).

I watered down the acrylic paint in hopes that it would saturate the rug more evenly.

As you can see, the red isn’t completely covered after the first coat, so this is where I switched over to the latex paint and a bigger paint brush.

I let the black paint dry overnight and then mixed up some paint for the stencil. I decided to jump straight to the latex paint and luckily had some colors leftover to make a light beige.

The stencil worked pretty well, the hardest part was making sure the back side of it stayed clean for each section.

I used the small sponge brush, one I had from previous projects that wasn’t designed to break instantly, to paint the stencil on and get into all of the little details.

Once the stencils were done I pulled out the big brush and slathered the rest on.

Looks like it has Mr. Wizard’s approval.

Obviously the texture of the rug is not at all like it was before, but I knew that going into the project and am happy with how it came out. Someone had asked me if I needed some sort of sealer coat to protect it from wear and though this bathroom doesn’t see a lot of traffic, I guess we’ll just have to see how this stands the test of time.